Alfredo Torero

Who was Alfredo Torero?

Alfredo Augusto Torero Fernández de Córdova was a Peruvian anthropologist and linguist.

Alfredo Torero came to prominence thanks to his article "The Dialects of Quechua" in 1964 and ranks among the founders of Andean linguistics. Much of his work is characterised by bringing into his linguistic investigations also cultural aspects of the Andean peoples. Besides Quechua and Aymara, he researched extinct languages such as Mochica and Puquina.

The present classification of the Quechua language family is based fundamentally on his analysis and that of Gary Parker, who independently came to similar results. One particularly important finding of his research is that it is clear that Quechua did not originate, as is still popularly believed, in the region of the Inca capital Cuzco, but almost certainly somewhere considerably further north in Central Peru. Torero's proposed precise homeland for Quechua was the central coast of Peru in the Lima Region, although this remains unproven and challenged by other linguists.